* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[37] See Appendix A for the text of the 1912 Bill.

[38] It is proposed that the representation be divided as follows:—Ulster, 59 members; Leinster, 41; Munster, 37; Connaught, 25; The Universities, 2; making a total of 164.

[39] In Canada the Senators are selected for life. Since 1891 the New Zealand Senators are selected for seven years only.

[40] See Appendix C.

[41] "Against Home Rule." London: Warne and Co., 1/-net.

[42] Home Rule was not properly debated in the General Election of 1895, which turned on other issues, and in the General Elections of 1900 and 1906 it was laid aside by common consent.

[43] See Appendix D.

[44] The 146th clause of the British North America Act (1867) reads as follows:—

ADMISSION OF OTHER COLONIES.

"It shall be lawful for the Queen, by and with the advice of Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, on Addresses from the Houses of Parliament of Canada, and from the Houses of the respective Legislatures of the Colonies or Provinces of Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, and British Columbia, to admit those Colonies or Provinces, or any of them, into the Union, and on Address from the Houses of Parliament of Canada to admit Ruperts Land and the North Western Territory, or either of them, into the Union, on such terms and conditions in each case as are in the Addresses expressed, and as the Queen thinks fit to approve, subject to the provisions of this Act: and the provisions of any Order in Council in that behalf shall have effect as if they had been enacted by the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland."

[45] For a description of this machinery see Chap. IX., "Home Rule in the World," p. 121.

[46] April 9th, 1886.



HOME RULE DIFFICULTIES

ULSTER



"Violent measures have been threatened. I think the best compliment I can pay to those who have threatened us is to take no notice whatever of the threats, but to treat them as momentary ebullitions, which will pass away with the fears from which they spring, and at the same time to adopt on our part every reasonable measure for disarming those fears."

* * * * *

"Sir, I cannot allow it to be said that a Protestant minority in Ulster or elsewhere is to rule the question for Ireland. I am aware of no constitutional doctrine on which such a conclusion could be adopted or justified. But I think that the Protestant minority should have its wishes considered to the utmost practicable extent in any form which they may assume."

GLADSTONE (1893).



CHAPTER V.

HOME RULE DIFFICULTIES

"Sooner or later," said a wise man to me the other day, "always sooner or later in the Home Rule question you bump up against religion." That is, unhappily, still true, though not so true to-day as in 1886 or in 1893. No one who visits Ireland to-day can doubt that the religious hatreds of the past are being softened; but, unhappily, this process, as recent events have vividly shown us, is still fiercely resisted by a small minority.

It may almost be said that in Ireland religious intolerance is a political vested interest. It would indeed be impossible to justify the immense preponderance of salaried power and place still given at the centre to the Protestant minority[47] unless you could maintain the idea that the Catholic is a dangerous man when in a place of power. That consideration, doubtless largely unconscious, may yet partly explain the immense amount of energy devoted in the north-east of Ireland to the encouragement of religious prejudice—honest in many of the rank-and-file, artificial, I fear, in many of the organisers.

BELFAST

Belfast, so like a great modern city in its magnificent outward aspect, is still largely mediaeval at heart. Its chief social energies are thrown into that vast and powerful organisation known as the "Orange Society"—still wearing the badges of the seventeenth century, still uttering its war-cries, and still feeding on its passions. This immense religious club has to support in the modern age that theory of religious incompatibility which nearly every other community has long ago abandoned. It has to justify itself in excluding from the municipal honours of Belfast almost every Roman Catholic. It has to justify the majority of 300,000 Belfast Protestants in giving a small and inadequate representation among the rulers of this great wealthy town to the minority of 100,000 Catholics. To maintain this policy of Ulster ascendancy the Orange chiefs watch every document that comes from Rome with a lynx eye, and try to catch a glimpse of the "Scarlet Woman" behind every Latin rescript.

All this may appear to some good politics; but surely it is past tolerance when these manufacturers of intolerance talk of the intolerance of others.

In all these respects Belfast stands almost alone in Ireland. A canon of the Catholic Church—a man of winning manners and charming personality, who lives on quite friendly terms with his Protestant neighbours in the South of Ireland—told me that on the only occasion when he visited Belfast he was spat at in the streets. The story is quite credible to those who have watched the deliberate manipulation of the worst religious passions by the party organisers of Ulster, not always unassisted by their colleagues in London.

One result is that if you ask any question as to the character of a man in the city of Belfast, the answer will always come to you in terms of religion. In the South the reply will be, "He is a Nationalist," or "He is a Unionist." But in Belfast it will be, "He is a Catholic," or "He is a Protestant."

So fierce is this feeling in Belfast that until recently all political and social differences were submerged by it, and every fresh effort towards local progress was broken up by the revival of religious prejudice. Things have been somewhat changed by the wonderful social and political crusade, quite independent of all religious differences, carried on by that remarkable young citizen of Belfast, Mr. Joseph Devlin, who captured the constituency of West Belfast in 1906 and retained it in 1910 largely on a social reform policy. He has for the first time given Ulster a glimpse of something better than religious fanaticism—a social policy based on the unions of religions for the good of all.[48]

This break in the dark clouds must surely spread until a better spirit prevails.

For Belfast, perhaps, has more to gain than any other great Irish city by a policy that would pacify Ireland. If Belfast could once shake off the memory of her immigrant origin, and look to Ireland rather than Great Britain as her native country, she would perceive that the gain of Catholic Ireland must be her gain also. Her prosperity can never be sure or certain as long as it stands out against a background of Irish poverty. The linen industry can never rest secure as long as there are so few industries to support it. The linen merchants cannot really gain by their isolation. Belfast at present has a great export trade. She clothes Great Britain in fine linen. But what about her home trade? Would not Belfast be even more prosperous if she could clothe Ireland too?—if Ireland could afford to put aside her rags and replace them with "purple and fine linen" from the factories of the North?

Might not Belfast, in that case, be able not merely to enrich her merchants but to raise the social conditions of her own people? For it is unhappily the case that the researches of the Women's Trade Unions have disclosed in Belfast conditions of sweated labour that have surprised and alarmed even the most hardened investigators. The lofty buildings and humming mills of Belfast are revealed to be resting on a swamp of social misery. Nor is this at all remarkable, for the mass of the people are kept helpless and divided by their religious divisions, which are too often used as a weapon to prevent them from combining for higher wages and shorter hours. Religious fanaticism is not quite so self-sacrificing in its commercial results as superficial observers might suppose.

It is impossible, indeed, that Belfast can continue for ever in a prosperity isolated and aloof from the country in which she is situated. Either she must throw in her lot with Ireland or Ireland must drag Ireland down into one common pit of adversity. Lord Pirrie, the enterprising and fearless director of the great shipbuilding works on Queen's Island—works which maintained their pre-eminence and continued their output through the dark days of the shipbuilding trade on the Clyde and the Thames—has been converted to Home Rule. Other business men will follow his example, for Belfast, as much as any other town in Ireland, suffers in Private Bill legislation from the remoteness of the Legislature and the Administration. She, too, has too often to endure a financial policy not suited to her needs. She, like the rest of Ireland, has everything to gain and nothing to lose by a policy that will enable Ireland to obtain legislation better fitted to the needs of the Irish people.

In spite, indeed, of her outcries, Ulster has already gained more from the policy of the Nationalists at Westminster than from that of the Orange reactionaries who represent half the province at Westminster. Those Orangemen have identified the robust Radicalism and Presbyterianism of Ulster with the narrowest demands of the Anglican landlords and Tories of England. Happily for Ulster, they have been defeated. The farmers of Ulster are at present buying their farms under the policy of Land Purchase which the Orange Ulstermen resisted. These farmers have freely used the Land Courts which their representatives denounced as revolution and the "end of all things." They are profiting by the triumphs of Nationalist policy even while they denounce the Nationalists in terms which are reserved by other people for criminals and wild beasts.

The best men in Ulster will probably think twice before prolonging a campaign of rebellion. We have heard of late threats of refusal to pay taxes or rents to the Irish Parliament. But what could be more dangerous to a city like Belfast than a no-rent campaign under the guidance of English lawyers? If the farmers are advised not to pay their rents to Dublin, is it not likely that the working-class tenants of Belfast may refuse to pay their rents to their own landlords? At their own peril, indeed, will a class which largely lives on rent and interest strike a blow at the habits and customs which enforce such payments. The kid-glove revolution of linen merchants might suddenly and swiftly turn into something nearer to the real, red thing. It is dangerous to set examples in revolution.

As Ulster gradually swings round to the inevitable, she will discover that there is a very bright silver lining to what seems to her so black a cloud. Ulster, while still represented at Westminster, will send 59 members to Dublin under the 1912 Bill. Thus she will have no small or mean representation in the future Irish Parliament. She may have far more power than she imagines, if she uses it with wisdom. A strong Progressive section from the industrial North may hold the balance between the parties of the South and centre. It would be rash to predict the future. But there are many causes—education, Free Trade, enlightened local government, to take a few—in which Ireland will gain immensely by a strong, clear progressive lead. "The best is yet to be." Why should not Belfast—Belfast Protestant united with Belfast Catholic—have in these matters a greater and nobler part to play under Home Rule than under the present system of distant, ignorant, absent-minded, rule?

As for religious persecution, the thing would be absurdly impossible under any Home Rule Bill that possessed the guarantees and safeguards of the 1912 Bill. But, beyond those safeguards, Ulster will always have, in any such extreme and improbable event, an appeal to all the forces of the Empire—an appeal which would certainly not be in vain.

The conviction of these truths will gradually penetrate the shrewd brain of Ulster and save her from the madness of rebellion or secession. The patience and moderation of the Government will gradually disarm these men. Who knows whether in the end the majority in Belfast, as in Ulster, as a whole may not voluntarily prefer to join rather than hold aloof from a great national restoration?

* * * * *

In one of his 1893 Home Rule speeches, Mr. Gladstone reminded the House of Commons, with impressive power, of the splendid reception given in 1793 to the Protestant delegates from Grattan's Parliament at Dublin, who had come to plead for the concession of their rights to the Catholics of Ireland.

It was the Act of Union that destroyed all that generous feeling, and revived again the passions of ascendancy and fanaticism among the Orangemen of North-east Ulster.

But the old, generous feelings may yet return again.

SOUTHERN ULSTER

The great majority of the Protestants in Ireland stand outside this ring. They have no more share in the good things than the average Catholic. Those men, Irishmen first and Protestants afterwards, are now taking their part in public life and earning their proper share in the rewards of public zeal.

The delegates of the Eighty Club made a special public appeal for information as to cases of religious intolerance. They received a great many responses to this appeal, but it is hardly any exaggeration to say that they found no genuine cases of religious intolerance outside the North-east corner of Ulster, where they received some conspicuous examples of the religious persecution of Liberal Protestants by their Orange co-religionists.[49]

Journeying southwards, however, the Eighty Club delegates passed with every mile into a serener atmosphere. They received deputations at every wayside station from the public bodies in the south of Ulster. These presented documents stating the bare facts as to the representation of these two forms of the Christian religion—so often, alas! belying the doctrine of Christian love by the practice of mutual hatred—on their public bodies. They found, for instance, in Monaghan, a predominantly Catholic town, that seven seats on the local Council went to the Unionist and Protestant Party, a considerable concession from a majority large enough in numbers to pack the whole of the council if they so desired. That little town might give a good lesson to some of the boroughs of our great county of London, where it is an almost universal practice for either party to seize the whole of the seats if they are capable of doing so.

Take one more instance in that district—out of the many—in the town of Cavan, a preponderantly Catholic borough. There, out of twenty-three candidates at the last election standing for eighteen seats, four Unionists were elected by a similar method of compromise. Where is the evidence of the Orangemen in their strongholds meting out similar measure to the Catholics?

Passing further south they found that although the great majority of the public bodies was naturally Nationalist and Catholic, there was no sign of that spirit of rigid exclusiveness extended towards the Catholics by the Protestants in the city of Belfast. Of course, a large number of the Protestant officials found so frequently in the service of these public bodies are appointed in Ireland by the Crown, and not, as in England, by the local authorities. But the Protestants are not confined to those offices. Dublin has several times freely elected a Protestant to the Lord Mayoralty of that city. In other parts of southern Ireland the Eighty Club found Protestants as masters in the county schools, surveyors of taxes, local registrars, clerks of the works, rate collectors, and public librarians. The Catholics on the local bodies recognise that the Protestants in the south possess, owing to their superior advantages in education, a great proportion of the brains, and they are not slow to do justice to this fact in filling public posts.

In regard to elections, let us be quite candid. It is not to be expected that an Irish elector will return at the head of the poll men who hurl abuse and calumny at the Irish race and at the religion held by the great majority of the Irish race. Treachery to one's cause and one's faith is not required by any proper doctrine of tolerance. Surrender is not the same thing as compromise. We do not, for instance, expect in England that a Unionist constituency should return a Liberal, or a Liberal constituency should return a Tory. We expect men to live up to their faith, and even admire them for doing so. In Ireland, similarly, Nationalist voters, as a whole, prefer Nationalist members, and will continue to do so until this great issue of Home Rule is settled.

CHANCES OF PEACE

But when a Unionist or a Protestant comes forward with a single eye to the public good, and displays in public affairs a broad and generous spirit, he finds no difficulty in securing his place in public life. In county Cork and Tipperary we found Protestant landlords who had sold their estates. Having ceased to be rent collectors, they are becoming real leaders of their people. These landlords are reorganising co-operative societies, encouraging agricultural experiments, looking after schools, and helping generally in the regrowth of Ireland with a real good will. Many of these men are Devolutionists. Take, for instance, Sir Nugent Everard, the public-spirited squire who, with great enterprise, enthusiasm, and perseverance, is reviving that old Irish tobacco industry which once played so big a part in the prosperity of Ireland. Sir Nugent Everard is a Protestant, but he has been elected to his county council. On that council, too, he has been appointed chairman of several committees by his Catholic fellow county councillors.

There is, indeed, at the present moment throughout the south of Ireland a new spirit of willingness, amounting almost to eagerness, to accept the services of all distinguished Protestants who will work for the common good of Ireland. That is not at all surprising when we remember that the Irish Party have, in the past, numbered among their leaders at least three distinguished Protestants—Grattan, Butt, and Parnell—and at the present day always return a steady percentage of Protestant representatives to the Imperial Parliament.[50]

The plain fact is that, except in the north-east corner, religious intolerance is a dying cause in Ireland, and even in Belfast it is mainly kept alive by artificial respiration frequently administered by English Unionist leaders.

Every phase of Irish life is expressed in Irish humour. Two Irish stories commonly related to-day in the south really throw some light on the change of feeling in Ireland. One is that of a Protestant parson in the south who found that the Bishop was about to visit his parish for a confirmation. But, unhappily, it so happened that there were no young people to confirm. The parson was in despair. After long reflection, he took a great decision. He went across to the Catholic priest and described his unhappy plight. "Indeed," he said, "I shall be a ruined man." "Sure," said the priest sympathetically, "I will lend you a congregation." "How will you do that?" said the parson. "Faith! I'll tell the boys and girls to go across." And the story relates that when the Bishop came down he actually found the church full of "boys and girls" who, for the moment, figured as Protestants.

The second story comes from Ulster, and seems to show that there is some softening even in the rigour of that climate. It is said that "once upon a time," when July 11th came round one of the Orange drummers found that on the last occasion he had broken his drum, and could not get it mended. Finding himself faced with disgrace, he wandered through the town after a drum, and finally found himself looking at a very beautiful specimen of its kind standing in a Catholic schoolroom. After much heart-searching, the Orangeman at last went in, and timidly told the Catholic priest the extremity of his Protestant need. "You shall have the drum," said the priest; "but you must not break it this time." And so, on that condition, the drum was handed over.

Perhaps if such relations were to become more common the drums would actually beat more softly in the north of Ireland.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[47] Take the facts given by Mr. John J. Horgan, in his interesting pamphlet entitled "Home Rule—A Critical Consideration":—"In a country of which three-fourths of the population are Catholic there has not been a Catholic Viceroy since 1688. There never was a Catholic Chief Secretary. There have been three Catholic Under-Secretaries. There have been two Catholic Chancellors. In the High Court of Justice there are seventeen Judges; three of them are Catholics. There are twenty-one County Court Judges and Recorders; eight of them are Catholics. There are thirty-seven County Inspectors of Police; five of them are Catholics. There are 202 District Inspectors of Police; sixty-two of them are Catholics. There are over 5,000 Justices of the Peace; a little more than one-fifth of them are Catholics. There are sixty-eight Privy Councillors; eight of them are Catholics.

"Let us now consider some of the large Government Departments. Take the Local Government Board. This body consists of two elements—the nominated and highly paid officials and those who secure admission through competitive examinations. From the latter class Catholics cannot, of course, be excluded. The permanent Vice-President is to all intents and purposes the Local Government Board. He is a Protestant and a Unionist. Of the three Commissioners, two are Protestants, one a Catholic. On the permanent staff we find forty-seven nominated officials, thirty-four of whom are Protestants: and the balance of thirteen Catholics. The thirty-four Protestants draw an average yearly salary of L653 13s., while the average yearly salary of the thirteen Catholic officials only amounts to L580. On the permanent staff created by competitive examination the story is very different. Here we find forty-three Catholics and twenty-five Protestants. Brains and ability could not be kept out. But what about their remuneration? The average salary of the forty-three Catholics amounts to L207 13s. 6d., while that of the twenty-five Protestants is L304 8s. Can any sensible man believe that there is no favour here?"

[48] The result is that since 1906 Ulster has been half Nationalist in its Parliamentary representation. Taking the last three General Elections together, the Nationalists have nearly an average hold over half the seats in Ulster:—1906: Nationalist and Liberal, 17; Unionist, 16. 1910 (January): Nationalist and Liberal, 15; Unionist, 18. 1910 (December): Nationalist and Liberal, 16; Unionist, 17. And yet people talk as if Ulster was entirely Unionist!

[49] Many of these experiences were narrated to me personally by the sufferers, and consisted of boycotting in religion, trade and social life.

[50] There are now eight Protestants among the Nationalist Party. The directors of Maynooth College told us that the two best friends of their college were Burke and Grattan. A portrait of Grattan hangs in their hall. It was, too, a Catholic Corporation that re-gilded the statue of William III.—William of Orange—at Dublin.



HOME RULE DIFFICULTIES

ROME RULE or HOME RULE?

"There is a principle on our part which must ever prevent (Catholicism being established) in Ireland. It is this—that we are thoroughly convinced that it would be the surest way of de-Catholicising Ireland. We believe that tainting our Church with tithes and giving temporalities to it would degrade it in the affections of the people."

O'CONNELL.



"I want soldiers and sailors for the State; I want to make a greater use than I now can do of a poor country full of men. I want to render the military service popular among the Irish; to make every possible exertion for the safety of Europe ... and then you, and ten other such boobies as you, call out 'for God's sake, do not think of raising cavalry and infantry in Ireland....' They interpret the Epistle to Timothy in a different manner from what we do!"

"'They eat a bit of wafer every Sunday, which they call their God!' ... I wish to my soul they would eat you, and such reasoners as you are!"

SYDNEY SMITH (Peter Plymley's Letters).



CHAPTER VI.

HOME RULE DIFFICULTIES

Those who watch closely the exploitation of the religious cry against Home Rule will have observed that its exploiters always endeavour to make the best of both worlds. One world is expressed in the phrase, "Home Rule means Rome Rule." The other by the watchword, "Priest-ridden Ireland." Those who use the first of these cries are always trying to persuade themselves that the gift of Home Rule will increase the power of the Catholic Church in Ireland and produce a kind of religious tyranny over the Protestant minority. How that could be done under a measure so carefully safeguarded as, for instance, the Bill of 1912,[51] they never condescend to tell us. It is part of their policy never to enter into details, but to produce a general atmosphere of distrust and unreason.

But it is often these very same people who draw terrible pictures of the power of the Roman Catholic Church already existing in Ireland at the present moment. They do not explain how both of these propositions can be true—how, if Ireland is already "priest-ridden"—a superlative phrase—without Home Rule, there is any room for an increase of that evil under Home Rule. They never seem to contemplate the possibility that the proper and natural corrective to the power of the priest, if it be excessive, is the creation of a strong rival civil power.

Is it, indeed, so certain that "Home Rule" would increase the power of Rome in Ireland? I have even heard it said that the Home Rule cause finds its headquarters at Rome, and that it is part of a gigantic conspiracy of the Vatican to break up a Protestant Empire. Do those who reason thus ever reflect how it is that the English Catholics are often among the most formidable opponents of the Home Rule cause?

Why are the English Catholics so often opposed to Home Rule? The answer was given by Cardinal Manning in the famous phrase quoted by Lord Morley: "We want every one of their eighty votes."

UNIONISM AS "ROME RULE"

Those who fear Home Rule as "Rome Rule" in Ireland had better, indeed, examine themselves as to whether their action in defeating the Home Rule Bill of 1893 has not, so far as it goes, led to this very same effect in England. It must never be forgotten that it was with the help of the 80 Irish votes, pressed back to Westminster by the Irish Bishops in sympathy with the Catholic Bishops in England, that the British Parliament passed those clauses of the 1902 Education Act which are most offensive to English Nonconformists. Dr. Clifford has coined the expression "Rome on the rates." It is not, perhaps, a phrase that tells the whole story. We cannot forget how many of the poorer Catholics in our great cities are the descendants of the unhappy Irishmen who were evicted between 1840 and 1880 from the cabins of Ireland. Those poor exiles have a special call on our purses. But Anglicanism—rich Anglicanism—has also been placed on the rates. It has been placed there through a working alliance between the English Church and Rome, carrying out its aims by means of the votes of the Catholic Irish members. Those members only acted up to their principles in so voting. It was Great Britain that compelled them to remain as full voters in full strength at the British Parliament. As long as they are there the Irish must be expected to vote for the interests of their own religion and their own people. But what of the sincerity of the people who, after using the aid of the Irish to endow the Catholic and Anglican schools in England, now raise this outcry about "Rome Rule" in Ireland?

It is vital, indeed, to point out that in these matters Home Rule for Ireland is the only possible road to Home Rule for England also. Under the 1912 Bill the Irish vote at Westminster is reduced to 42, and will, if English self-government be also extended, be excluded from education altogether. Thus the first plain and practical result of Irish Home Rule would be not so much to give the Roman Catholics more power in Ireland as to give the Protestants more liberty in England. But who can doubt that it would also introduce a new element of civil power into the schools of Ireland?[52]

NATIONALISM AND RELIGION

As to Ireland itself, indeed, there can be no doubt that the great national wrongs of the Irish people have immensely strengthened the hold of the Roman Catholic Church over that island during the last century.

Let us look back for a moment at the historic relations between Roman Catholicism and the Irish National cause.

No doubt the iron hammer of Cromwell—in England the rebel, in Ireland the conqueror—and the long torture of the penal laws both contributed to weld together the religious and political faith of Ireland. During those dark days, Nationalism and Catholicism were almost identical terms. It has been shrewdly remarked that Henry VIII. and Elizabeth might probably have converted Ireland to Protestantism if they had preached the reformed faith in the Irish language. However that may be, it is quite certain that Protestantism stood throughout the eighteenth century as the sign and uniform of the conqueror and the devastator. Catholicism remained as the hope and sign of the conquered. Any Irishman who became a Protestant was naturally suspected of being a traitor, not merely to his religion but also to his nation.

Yet at the end of the eighteenth century the British Government had a great opportunity of dividing the national from the religious cause. Grattan's Parliament, with all its brilliancy and efficiency, was, after all, a Parliament from which every Catholic was excluded. That Parliament, indeed, as we have noted, granted the franchise to the Catholic peasant and abolished the penal laws. But it was part of the policy of the British Government to show that Grattan's Parliament could not grant Catholic emancipation in its full sense. The grant was to be kept as a bribe by which to achieve the policy of the Union. Anyone who reads the story in the pages of Lecky[53] must see how that motive ran like a sinister thread throughout the whole working of British policy from 1795 to 1800.

Well, that policy succeeded only too thoroughly for the time. Among the various forms of bribery which induced the Irish Parliament to give a vote for the Union at the second time of asking, the gift of money and titles were, perhaps, less powerful than the offer of Catholic emancipation. Recent researches have shown that that offer led to the conversion of Bishops and their clergy throughout the whole of Ireland, besides winning over the great body of Catholic Peers.

It is now known, indeed, to be the fact that the British Government actually induced the Vatican to bring pressure upon the Irish leaders and the Irish bishops in order to achieve their object. It is almost certain that unless that offer had been made, and unless the Catholic Party in Ireland had been informed that the Act of Union was the inevitable price for Catholic emancipation, Lord Castlereagh would never have succeeded in closing the Irish Parliament.[54]

That bargain was broken. It is unhappily the case that the British Ministers must have given their pledge to the Catholic Party in Ireland with the conscious knowledge of their inability to carry it out. For over them all was their King, George III., still with the Royal privilege of dismissal for his Ministers, and resolutely, fiercely resolved not to grant Catholic emancipation. Pitt relieved his conscience by a two-years' resignation, but he returned to Parliament without achieving his pledge. For another thirty years the struggle went on. It is the Duke of Wellington himself who has handed down to history the testimony that Catholic emancipation was only finally granted in 1829 in order to save Ireland from a second rebellion.

It is that record that has driven Ireland into the arms of Rome, and who can wonder?

England has now only paid the price of that great betrayal of 1800—a betrayal almost as great as the broken treaty of Limerick. Those who read the story of 1800 to 1830, and especially the brilliant sketch of O'Connell's life in Lecky's "Leaders of Irish Public Opinion," will know that it was in the course of this prolonged struggle for Catholic emancipation that the forces of religion and politics were first thrown into close alliance in Ireland. It was not until after 1820 that the Catholic priest took the place of the Irish landlord, and became what he was throughout most of the nineteenth century, the political leader of his district. It was O'Connell who first carried out that great revolution in political strategy. It was he who first placed the flocks of the Irish people under the guidance of shepherds who carried the crook and not the rent-book. If the Home Rule movement has been assisted by religious fervour, that has been the fault of British statesmen. If the Irish have stood apart from the rest of Europe by a steadily deepening loyalty to their faith, the reason is largely to be found in the British policy of 1800.

ROME AND HOME RULE

What is the moral of all this? Some of the Unionists themselves give a shrewd though cynical comment on the situation when they suggest, in the intervals of crying "Home Rule means Rome Rule," that probably the Roman Catholic priests have no great zeal for Home Rule. I do not, myself, for a moment believe that that is the case. The Roman Catholic priests of Ireland have themselves been elevated and purified by the great struggle, both social and political, through which they have passed. They stand apart from the rest of the priesthood of Europe, distinguished above all others by their deep and strong democratic sympathies. When all others deserted the people of Ireland in the black times of the '98 Rebellion, in the dark and evil days of the famine of 1847, or through the murderous retaliations that followed, the Irish priesthood stood staunchly by Ireland. Those who remained faithful then are not likely to desert the cause of their people now that it is on the verge of success. A broader and more enlightened view of the future was expressed to me by that distinguished man the Vice-president of Maynooth College, when he said:—"We do not expect any direct gain for our faith, but as Irishmen we are with Ireland, and as Catholics we cannot but believe that the prosperity of a Catholic nation must redound to the glory of Catholicism." That is the view of a good Catholic who is also a good citizen.

But though we may believe in their resisting power to this great temptation, we must remember that the failure to settle the Home Rule question would give to the bishops and priests a great power in Ireland. They would remain the great, pre-eminent centre of national authority. Look at their position now. They are public men; they are allowed, without envy or opposition, to maintain an unchallenged control over the schools; they have a voice in all great public decisions of policy, even in regard to such matters as old-age pensions, insurance, or agriculture. The present position plays into their hands. "Rome Rule" is far more powerful without "Home Rule."

So much for the Irish clergy. But what of Rome itself? Looked at from the distance of the Seven Hills, and viewed from the standpoint of a Church that contemplates all forms of human government with equal indifference, always regarding only the good of their Church, is it not possible that the acute diplomatists of the Eternal City may think that they stand to gain more by prolonging than by satisfying the present hunger of Ireland? At present Rome holds Ireland in fee. As long as Ireland possesses no strong secular central power she must always lean on the authority of her bishops and archbishops. But Rome thinks probably more of the 40,000,000 people of Britain than of the 4,000,000 of Ireland. As long as England persists in holding Ireland in bondage she must pay to Rome some compensation. The eighty votes at Westminster are still doing the work which Cardinal Manning required of them. Is it likely that Rome is so beset with anxiety to drive them across the Channel? Is it altogether unlikely that some of the more shrewd Italian or Spanish diplomatists at the Vatican—advised, perhaps, by their English bishops and dukes—may hope to affect the issue rather in the Unionist than in the Home Rule direction? Such suspicions may be entirely baseless, but it will be impossible to disregard them entirely during the events of the next few years.

It would not be the first time, nor the latest since Castlereagh, when the extreme Protestant Unionists of this country conspired with the Tory Ultramontanes of the Vatican to traffic away the liberties of Ireland.[55]

Amid all these doubts and perplexities we shall be wise to stick fast to the central doctrine that civil liberty and religious liberty stand together. This is the one truth that emerges from the history of Europe during the last three centuries. Wherever we look—whether in Germany, France, Holland, Scotland, or England—we see that these two rights have always gone hand in hand.

Is there, indeed, a single instance in human history when the grant of civil liberty has led to the forging of religious chains? Look to the West, and note how, in the freest countries of the world—in the United States and Canada, where there is not even a shadow of an establishment for any form of religion—every kind of human faith lives together in simple human brotherhood, and draws from that brotherhood new food for the refreshment of mankind. In Ireland the one reason why the religious quarrel has been maintained is to be found in the absence of civil liberty. At every crisis of Ireland's fate the passion of religious hatred has been worked—then as now—in order to prolong civil and political despotism.

May we not be sure that Home Rule, instead of strengthening this evil tendency, will weaken it? May we not be equally sure that it will take no blood or muscle from the cause of true religion, certain to flourish with greater richness and power where Christian love prevails?

Is it possible, in short, that in Ireland alone, of all countries, freedom should mean persecution? On the contrary, is it not far more likely that Home Rule for Ireland will mean neither Rome Rule nor Orange Rule, but the "rule of the best for the good of all"?

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[51] See Appendix A for the text of the Bill.

[52] The priests have now practically complete power of dismissal over the elementary teachers in the Irish schools. The only appeal is to the Bishops.

[53] In his "History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century." That book is one of the most conscientious pieces of work in all modern historical literature. It should be read by all who wish to gain a thorough understanding of the Irish problem.

[54] See a very interesting pamphlet entitled "The Closing of the Irish Parliament," by John Roche Ardill, LL.D. (Dublin). Dublin: Hodges, Figgis and Co. Price 1s. 6d.

[55] For instance, it was by a Unionist intrigue at the Vatican that the Pope was induced to denounce the "Plan of Campaign," and to restrain the agitation among the Irish priests.



HOME RULE IN HISTORY

FIVE CENTURIES OF LIMITED HOME RULE (1265-1780)



"You parade a great deal upon the vast concessions made by this country to the Irish before the Union. I deny that any voluntary concession was ever made by England to Ireland. What did Ireland ever ask that was granted? What did she ever demand that was not refused? How did she get her Mutiny Bill—a limited Parliament—a repeal of Poynings' Law—a Constitution? Not by the concessions of England, but by her fears. When Ireland asked for all these things upon her knees, her petitions were rejected with Percevalism and contempt; when she demanded them with the voice of 60,000 armed men, they were granted with every mark of consternation and dismay"

SYDNEY SMITH.



CHAPTER VII.

HOME RULE IN HISTORY

What is the fact of Irish history vital to our present cause? Surely it is this, that up to the year 1800—the year of the Act of Union—Ireland had possessed for practically five centuries a Home Rule Government in some shape or form. In other words, self-government had been the rule and not the exception throughout the centuries preceding 1800. This is a complete and sufficient answer to those who argue that the supporters of Irish Home Rule are making a proposal of a completely novel and revolutionary kind, without precedent in the history of the Western world.

As a matter of plain fact, it was the framers of the Act of Union who were the revolutionaries, and it is the supporters of Home Rule who are returning to the ancient paths. The Home Rulers have five centuries behind them, as against the one century behind the Unionists. From the days of Simon de Montfort[56] the Irish Parliament developed side by side with the English, growing with the growth of English rule in Ireland, and varying with its limitations. Its powers, indeed, were placed under a grave and serious limitation by Poynings' Law, passed in the reign of Henry VII.,[57] and strengthened in the reign of Mary Tudor.[58] They were for a brief time entirely taken away by Oliver Cromwell, who was, strangely enough, the first great Unionist ruler of Ireland. Restored by Charles II., the Irish Parliament was again limited in power by the Government of George I.[59] But in 1782 it broke through all these limitations, and became for a short brilliant period a fully self-governing Parliament.

We have thus the illuminating fact that, with one single exception—and that an example eminent in English affairs, but certainly not to be followed in Irish—every great English ruler and monarch governed Ireland under a distinct Irish Home Rule Parliament up to the year 1800. If Home Rule is so certain to be ruinous to Empire, how, we may well ask, did these rulers build up the British Empire? How did Marlborough and Clive, Chatham and Walpole, do their great world-work with an Irish Parliament behind them? The answer is, of course, that they did it better, and not worse, because Ireland was so far satisfied with her fortunes as to be willing to put her full force into the struggle for Empire.

For as long as Ireland possessed a Parliament she always possessed hope.

THE UNION CENTURY

As against these five centuries, we have one century of Irish rule under a united Parliament—1800 to 1911. One against five. But as the one is more recent, we have here not a bad provision of material for an answer to the question: "Which has proved in the past the best way of governing Ireland—Union or Home Rule?"

In regard to the century of Union, the record lies before us, open and palpable, a tale of disaster and tragedy almost without parallel in the modern history of the world. We see in the statistics of Irish population, of Irish disease, of Irish poverty during the nineteenth century[60] a black picture of material decay that literally "cries to Heaven" for redress.

Side by side with these statistics, too, we have others to clinch the evidence which traces the cause to the Act of Union. For the nineteenth century was no century of decay. On the contrary, in almost every other Western country, and especially in countries of the same racial and religious fusion—in the United States, in the United Kingdom, and in the British Colonies—the nineteenth century was a period of rising population, advancing commerce, and abounding prosperity.

Nor is it the fact that British Ministers had any deliberate malice against Ireland. On the contrary, many noble Englishmen worked themselves grey during the nineteenth century in their efforts to make the best of the Union system. Viceroy after Viceroy, and Chief Secretary after Chief Secretary, have gone to Ireland full of hope, and have come back converted reluctantly to the admission that their efforts have been in vain and their work wasted under the present form of Government.[61]

"For forms of government let fools contest; Whate'er is best administered is best"

sang Pope. But there are some forms of government so bad that they cannot be well administered. Among them is the form of government established under the Act of Union.

Unionist writers who are honest enough to admit the decay of Ireland between 1800-1900 attempt to trace it to any other cause than the Act of Union—to over-population, to the Catholic religion, to the Irish character, or even to the potato. But they labour in vain. If Ireland stood alone, they might succeed. But it does not stand alone. Precisely at the time when Ireland was decaying, all other Western nations were flourishing. Precisely when the Irish race was withering in Ireland, the same race, with the same religion and the same national characteristics, was prospering exceedingly in America, and was even contributing much of the power, skill and value for building up the white British Colonies.

Unvarying progress on one side—on the other, unvarying decline, until checked by the willingness of England to listen to the voice of Ireland. What evidence could you have more convincing, what witnesses more eloquent?

Perhaps, indeed, the most convincing statement of this very case was given to the world, not by an Irishman or by any Liberal statesman, but by the great Lord Salisbury. Speaking in 1865 as Lord Robert Cecil, he uttered the following wise and statesmanlike summary of the policy of the Union up to that date:—

"What is the reason that a people with so bountiful a soil, with such enormous resources (as the Irish), lag so far behind the English in the race? Some say that it is to be found in the character of the Celtic race, but I look to France, and I see a Celtic race there going forward in the path of prosperity with most rapid strides—I believe at the present moment more rapidly than England herself. Some people say that it is to be found in the Roman Catholic religion; but I look to Belgium, and there I see a people second to none in Europe, except the English, for industry, singularly prosperous, considering the small space of country that they occupy, having improved to the utmost the natural resources of that country, but distinguished among all the peoples of Europe for the earnestness and intensity of their Roman Catholic belief. Therefore, I cannot say that the cause of the Irish distress is to be found in the Roman Catholic religion. An hon. friend near me says that it arises from the Irish people listening to demagogues. I have as much dislike to demagogues as he has, but when I look to the Northern States of America I see there people who listen to demagogues, but who undoubtedly have not been wanting in material prosperity. It cannot be demagogues, Romanism, or the Celtic race. What then is it? I am afraid that the one thing which has been peculiar to Ireland has been the Government of England."[62]

Nothing has occurred since 1865 to vary that judgment.

THE HOME RULE FIVE

So much for the one century of Union. What about the five of Home Rule?

"Were there no black centuries before 1800? Had Ireland no grievances? What of the 'curse of Cromwell,' the broken 'Treaty of Limerick,' and the penal laws?"

Thus I shall be challenged.

There were, indeed, black centuries before 1800, and black events. Ireland endured a special share of the agony inflicted upon Europe by the great religious struggles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. She suffered, perhaps, more than any other country from the divisions of Christian Europe following on the revolt of Luther against Rome in 1520. The statutory limitations of the Irish Parliament during that period led to many interferences from England, and the gradual exclusion of Catholics divided the Parliament from the Irish nation. The artificial infusion of a fanatical Protestant population by James I. and Cromwell produced a terrible embitterment of the struggle. There were crimes on both sides, and calamities beyond telling. But, with all that, it is still to be doubted whether any of those centuries presents such a picture of national decay, both industrial and social, as is presented by the Ireland of the nineteenth century.

For through the blackness of that night the Irish Parliament always shone like a star. Ireland grew with its growth, and withered with its decay. Precisely as she had more Home Rule she advanced, and precisely as she had less she fell back. But as long as the Parliament existed at all it could never be said that the final spark of liberty had been stamped out.

Even in the eighteenth century, when Catholic Ireland seemed to be crushed, and Ireland lay supine beneath the double weight of the penal laws and the commercial restrictions of England—an Ireland pictured for all time by the keen, merciless pen of Dean Swift—still the vestal flame was not quite extinguished. Captured by ascendancy, dominated by fanaticism, narrowed to one faith, or even to one section of that faith, the Irish Parliament still always provided a framework and machinery for a possible moment of regeneration and recovery.

That moment came in 1782—came, unhappily both for England and for Ireland, in such a form as to seem to justify the hard saying—"England's danger is Ireland's opportunity."

The story of 1782 has been told with surpassing brilliancy in the greatest of all Mr. Lecky's books—the darling of his youth and the worry of his old age—his "Leaders of Irish Public Opinion."[63] The disastrous and wasting struggle against our own kith and kin in the American colonies—forced on England by the folly of the same type of statesmen now resisting Home Rule—had reduced these islands to an almost defenceless condition. The British Army, intended for the defence of Great Britain, had been sent away into the forests and prairies of Northern America to fight an invisible foe, and to meet with a disastrous and undeserved defeat. But in their blind passion to subdue the Americans the British Government had for the moment forgotten Ireland. In their eagerness to conquer their colonies they had forgotten to maintain their hold on the half-conquered country at their side. The British troops had been withdrawn from Ireland as well as from England. At that dramatic moment France came into the struggle with her fleet, and Ireland, with her great harbours and her accessible coastline, could not be left defenceless. As Ireland had no British troops to defend her, it was inevitable that she should be allowed to defend herself.

Ireland, never slow in a fight, rose to this crisis. In a few months there sprang up throughout the country that wonderful movement of the Irish Volunteers. Ireland in a few weeks produced an army that kept Europe from her shores. Sixty thousand Irishmen stood to arms. Ireland could no longer be hectored or bullied. She was, for the moment—for the only time in her history—mistress of her own fate.

The American War came to its only possible end with the grant of American Independence. Great Britain turned to look to her own domestic affairs, and found herself face to face with the possibility of a second war. For Ireland, having once armed to resist Europe, refused to disarm until she received her liberty. The Volunteers, in other words, would not disperse except on the conditions that the Irish Parliament should become a reality. Poynings' Law was to be repealed. The right of legislative initiative was to be given back to the Irish Parliament, and England was to admit solemnly and categorically the right of Ireland to make laws for herself.

It was a tremendous demand, but the British Government had no choice except to yield. Exhausted with the American struggle, the British Ministers could not face a second war. The demands of Ireland were granted, and thus in a moment Grattan's Parliament, in the full panoply of armed strength, sprang into existence.

Well might Grattan exclaim, at the opening of that Parliament, in words that still send a thrill through every true lover of freedom:—

"I found Ireland on her knees. I watched over her with an eternal solicitude. I have traced her progress from injuries to arms, and from arms to liberty. Spirit of Swift! Spirit of Molyneux! Your genius has prevailed. Ireland is now a Nation! In that new character I now hail her! And, bowing to her august presence, I say, Esto Perpetua."[64]

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[56] The first real representative English Parliament, of course, was summoned by Simon de Montfort in 1265. Grattan was accustomed to claim "seven centuries" as the lifetime of the Irish Constitution; but in that, of course, he went back behind the days of a representative Parliament.

[57] Poynings' Law was passed by the Irish Parliament, at Drogheda, in 1495, under the influence of Sir Edward Poynings, the Lord Deputy of Ireland to the Viceroy Prince Henry, afterwards King Henry VIII. The essential provision of Poynings' Law was that it secured all initiative in legislation to the English Privy Council, leaving to Ireland nothing but the simple power of acceptance or rejection. Ireland was thus left only a veto, though a veto is often a considerable weapon.

[58] An Act in the reign of Mary forbade the Irish Parliament to alter or add to an Act of Parliament returned to her from England.

[59] 6 of George I. made the Irish Parliament subordinate and dependent.

[60] See Appendix B.

[61] Among the Viceroys converted of later years to Home Rule by experience of the present system of Irish Government may be named Lord Spencer, Lord Dudley, and probably the last Lord Carnarvon. The resignation of Mr. George Wyndham was due to the suspicion of his conversion.

[62] Quoted by Mr. Stephen Gwynn, M.P., in his brilliant book "The Case for Home Rule." (Maunsel & Co., Dublin.)

[63] See the essays on Flood and Grattan. (Longmans, 2 vols., 1903.)

[64] Grattan, 16th April, 1782.



HOME RULE IN HISTORY

GRATTAN'S PARLIAMENT

"To destroy is easy: the edifices of the mind, like the fabrics of marble, require an age to build, but ask only minutes to precipitate: and as the fall of both is an effort of no time, so neither is it a business of any strength. A pick-axe and a common labourer will do the one—a little lawyer, a little pimp, a wicked Minister the other."

GRATTAN (1800.)



"Yet I do not give up my country. I see her in a swoon, but she is not dead—though in her tomb she lies helpless and motionless, still there is on her lips a spirit of life, and on her cheeks a glow of beauty—

'Thou art not conquered: Beauty's ensign yet Is crimson on thy lips and in thy cheeks, And Death's pale flag is not advanced there.'"

GRATTAN (In the final debate on the Act of Union, May 26th, 1800).



CHAPTER VIII.

HOME RULE IN HISTORY

Grattan's Parliament was the first Parliament with full legislative authority possessed by Ireland since the time of Henry VII. It existed for nearly twenty years, and in that brief time it did a great work for Ireland. If we look for its epitaph we shall find it, strangely enough, in the words spoken in 1798 by the man who pursued Grattan's Parliament with his venomous hate, and finally compassed its doom—the famous Irish Chancellor, Lord Clare:—

"There is not a nation on the face of the habitable globe which has advanced in cultivation, in agriculture, in manufactures, with the same rapidity, in the same period, as Ireland."[65]

But, great and splendid as was Grattan's victory, there were two points of weakness in the settlement of 1782, soon to be revealed by experience. One was that although the Irish Parliament obtained the right of legislation, the appointment of the Government and the Executive was still placed in the hands of the Irish Privy Council, and therefore of the British Central Government. That meant, in the end, that the British Government still possessed the leverage for recovering the powers of legislative initiative and legislative veto.

As far as Ireland possessed separate executive powers, she used them with loyalty and patriotism. Take, for instance, her finance. Ireland possessed, under the settlement, a separate Irish Exchequer, and the British Government could levy no war taxes in Ireland, except with the consent of the Irish Parliament. That gave to the Irish Parliament an immense power of checking and hampering England in her struggle against Napoleon. If we were to judge from some of the talk heard at the present moment, one would take for granted that Ireland must have refused all help to England in that struggle.

On the contrary, the Irish Parliament voted sums freely to Pitt for the wars against France. The Irish statesmen would have no dealings with the English Whigs in their pro-French policy. Like that other great Irishman, Edmund Burke, Grattan was opposed to the spirit of the French Revolution. In that great European crisis Ireland showed herself what she really is—a nation inclined in all essentials to conservative rather than revolutionary ideas.

"CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION"

But it was the existence of a separate external executive, gradually limiting the legislative powers of the Irish Parliament, that finally brought out the gravity of the other signal defect in the settlement of 1782. That defect was the failure to effect a complete settlement of the Catholic question. For the Irish Parliament, even after 1782, was still confined to Protestants. Could any reasonable man call that a final solution of the problem of government in a country where four-fifths of the people were Catholics? With a truer foresight than Grattan, Flood desired that the Volunteers should refuse to lay down their arms until the Catholic question had been settled. But Grattan, still filled with that spirit of generous trust which has been the undoing of so many noble Irishmen, refused to use the military power for any further exaction of terms. He disbanded the Volunteers.

Grattan trusted that once the Irish Parliament was endowed with full powers, the Catholic question would settle itself. He could rely with certainty on his own Protestant followers. He persuaded them to repeal the penal laws. He prevailed upon them to extend the franchise to the Catholic peasant. Both those great reforms were passed through the Irish Parliament in the fulness of its strength and power, and the British Government were compelled to acquiesce. But there Grattan reached the limit of his authority. There was one more great step which had to be taken before the Catholic claims could be satisfied. It was necessary to concede the right to a Catholic, as to a Protestant, to sit in the Irish Parliament. When Grattan made that proposal, he found himself faced with new forces. The British Government and the Ascendancy Party in Ireland had already begun to regain their hold over the Irish Parliament. The forces of patronage and corruption were already at work.

If those had been the only powers Grattan might have defeated them. Neither he nor his admirers were perhaps wholly aware of what we now know to be the centre of this resistance—the dogged, almost insane, obstinacy of George III. Pitt indeed had already lost his earlier reforming zeal. The shadow of the French struggle had already fallen across his path, and had already shaken his early faith in freedom and progress. But if Pitt had been left alone he might still have done justice. It was George III. that lost us the soul of Ireland, as he lost us both the body and soul of North America.

There were, indeed, moments in those difficult days when the British people seemed to realise dimly the wisdom of what Burke saw to be the wisest British fighting policy—the policy of rallying Catholic Ireland against revolutionary France. There was, for instance, the mission of Lord Fitzwilliam in 1795—a Whig mission extorted from Pitt against his will, due to a Parliamentary complication, and backed from London with but half-hearted support. That famous mission which sent through Ireland such a strange, sad thrill of hope, soon closed in mist and darkness. Lord Fitzwilliam went to Ireland, as many Englishmen have gone since, with the intention of doing justice. He was thwarted, like most others, by the resistance of the local Ascendancy Party, fighting doggedly for the remnants of its power. It was the place-holders of Ireland who, intriguing with the Ministry in London, led to the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam.[66]

For that party was then playing the same part as it is attempting to play to-day. They were playing then, as ever since, on the nerves of Protestant England. They were conjuring up the dread of Catholic power, and the terror of Irish disloyalty. Unhappily, in the confusions of the moment—the confusions of the French wars—they succeeded. By compelling the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam they wrecked the hopes of the Grattan Parliament.

For after 1795 that Parliament was practically doomed, and events moved rapidly to their climax. Grattan, thwarted in his policy, and unwilling to be responsible for a body over which he had no control, withdrew into retirement. The Irish Catholics, feeling themselves again betrayed and deserted, relapsed all over Ireland into sullen indifference and detachment. The Protestant Parliament, deprived of their leader, swung more and more towards the Ascendancy Party. Even so, indeed, the virtue of self-government continued to work. No Parliament has left a better record of good local work for the prosperity of its country than Grattan's Parliament. From end to end of Ireland new industries had sprung up, and new life had been put into old industries. Ireland then was prosperous. Her exports had doubled. Her wealth was increasing. Her towns overflowed with life, and Dublin for the moment almost rivalled London in its brilliancy and its wit.[67]

THE GREAT REBELLION

This prosperity might have saved Grattan's Parliament but for a new movement which had crossed the two channels from France. It is doubtful whether the Catholics alone could have wrecked Grattan's Parliament. It was, curiously enough, the Irish Presbyterians of Ulster—our friends, the Orangemen—who sowed the seeds of revolt against the Protestant Parliament of 1782. It was they, in the combination known as the "United Irishmen," who started the movement that culminated in the Irish Rebellion in 1798. These Presbyterian Nonconformists had all been deeply affected by the doctrines of the French Revolution. They had for years past been agitating for a reform of the Irish Parliament on the lines subsequently adopted in 1831—chiefly by the abolition of the rotten boroughs. Grattan was with them, but again he was powerless. He was opposed, both in Dublin and in London, by the existing executives. Those executives now rested their power almost entirely on the members returned by those very same rotten boroughs. For ever since 1782 bribery had been going on, and as early as 1790 England had been rapidly buying back the hold she had lost in 1782. These being her weapons, it was not likely that the Irish executive was going to yield to the claims of the Irish Presbyterians. The Government resisted, and the movement of the Irish Reformers became more and more formidable.

All these causes of unrest culminated in the Irish Rebellion of 1798—a horrible event, beginning with the lawlessness of the revolutionary Presbyterians in the north—lawlessness so feebly checked as to raise grave suspicions in regard to the attitude of the Irish Government itself towards a possible revolution. But the outrages of the Orangemen on the Catholics in Ulster, and the Catholic feeling of desertion by the Government, soon produced a far more terrible outbreak in the south. That practically culminated in a religious war between Catholic and Protestant. From that moment the Rebellion was marked by atrocities on both sides almost as terrible as anything which occurred in the French Revolution. The Rebellion was extinguished in blood and fire.

The period of exhaustion and despair that followed in Ireland was seized upon by Castlereagh and Pitt for destroying the Irish Parliament. An immense machinery of bribery and corruption, assisted by pledges that were broken and prophecies that failed, all working under the double shadow of rebellion and war, drove the Irish Parliament to reluctant suicide, and passed into law, both at Dublin and Westminster, the Union Act of 1800.

That great light of the Irish Parliament thus passed suddenly into darkness. The Chamber which had resounded with the eloquence of Flood and Grattan passed over to the money-changers, and ever since the clink of coin has taken the place of the silver voices of the Irish orators.[68]

AFTER THE UNION

The events of 1800 left Ireland, for the moment, prostrate under the heel of Great Britain. The last remnants of self-government disappeared with the absorption of the two exchequers in 1817. Although Ireland still retained a separate administration, that administration was not under the control of any self-governing authority. Out of the Dragon's teeth of the Union rose the sinister army of a new bureaucracy, recruited almost entirely by the enemies of Ireland, and for the most part even working with its guns trained against the hopes and aspirations of the Irish race.

The artificial stimulus given to agriculture by the French wars concealed for some years the greatness of the disaster. The population of Ireland continued to rise. The Irish landlords, indeed, had for the moment a strong motive to multiply their tenants, in the existence of the forty shilling freehold vote granted by the Irish Parliament. Holdings were sub-divided, and the cultivation of the potato encouraged an even larger population on a lower level of subsistence. This prepared the way for the great catastrophe of the Irish famine in 1847. It was that famine which brought out fully, for the first time, the tremendous calamity inflicted on Ireland by the destruction of her Parliament.

For it was not that England showed any lack of sympathy in dealing with the Irish famine. It was indeed that event which finally converted Sir Robert Peel to the abolition of the Corn Laws, and, more even than the agitation of Richard Cobden or the speeches of John Bright, contributed to the final triumph of Free Trade. It was not want of sympathy that wrecked Ireland then. It was want of understanding. For it was only an Irish Government, living on the spot, and responsible to the people of Ireland itself, that could have risen to the great height of that tremendous emergency.

The monstrous human disaster that followed—the loss of 2,000,000 of population in twenty years—was the direct result of the destruction of all the means of prompt salvage and repair which could have been brought to bear only by a Home Rule Government.

During those calamitous decades another great evil emerged as a result of the Union. Many bad things have been said against the Irish land laws, and many of them are justified. But the Irish land laws in their old working were simply rather an exaggerated form of the very same laws that have survived in England right up to the present moment. Why is it that these laws proved intolerable in Ireland, and have yet survived up to the present moment in England? Simply because, after the passing of the Act of Union, they were aggravated by the great and terrible social evil of Absenteeism.

Even those bad laws could be made to work as long as there was a human relationship between the landlords and their tenants. Up to 1830, at any rate, there was a strong motive for that relationship. The victory of Catholic emancipation was a colossal triumph for the genius of Daniel O'Connell. It removed one of the worst surviving religious injustices in this kingdom. But in Ireland it was a victory of the tenant over the landlord, and it was achieved by a new alliance between tenant and priest against the landlord. While giving emancipation to the Catholics, the Act of 1830 also raised the level of the franchise, and abolished the forty shilling freehold vote, thus removing the landlord's motive for preserving the small tenancies.

The result was that the Irish landlords as a class—always, of course, with many conspicuous individual exceptions—entered from 1830 onwards upon a new career of hostility towards their tenants, amounting to little less than a passion for revenge. Being, for the most part, both Protestant and Absentee, they lost all interest in their tenantry, except that of rent collectors. The Irish famine made matters far worse. For the famine deprived the Irish tenant, for the moment, of the power of paying rent. Not only so, but by reducing him to pauperism it turned him into a distinct and definite burden on the rates.

The Irish landlords then first conceived the idea that, by getting rid of the people, they could save their pockets. At the same time, they made the great discovery that beasts were more profitable than peasants. Hence the great clearances and evictions of the period between 1840-1870. Hence the cruel compulsory exodus of vast masses of the people of Ireland to the shores of America. Hence, finally, the bitter cleavage between landlords and tenantry which brought the whole land system of Ireland crashing into ruin.

These disasters had one good effect. They roused the Irish people from their indifference. The bitter proofs of mis-government shown by the breakdown of their land system brought home to every cottager the need of a Home Rule Government. The great agitations for land reform and Home Rule went on side by side—sometimes taking a form of violence, but more and more of orderly constitutional pressure—until in the seventies there emerged at Westminster a powerful Irish Party, too strong either for the neglect or the indifference of any British Government.

ENGLAND'S NEED

It was impossible, indeed, for Great Britain to be indifferent, for she had suffered almost as much as Ireland. The hostility of the Irish Party formed a perpetual source of danger to her Governments, both Liberal and Tory, and a chronic source of instability in her administration. The democratic movement in England was continually weakened by the necessity of keeping Ireland down. That necessity largely broke the strength of the great reform movement of the thirties. It destroyed Sir Robert Peel's Government in the forties. It broke down the strength of Mr. Gladstone's Government in the eighties. Ireland and Irish affairs absorbed so much of the time of the British Parliament that the affairs of Great Britain herself were neglected. The old free and easy ways of the British Parliament were brought to a summary close by the obstruction of the Irish Party in the eighties, and the modern rules of compartment closure and strict limitation of debate were forced upon the Mother of Parliaments.

It was these consequences, quite as much as the sufferings of Ireland, that gradually converted a great body of the British people to the cause of Home Rule. That process was going on throughout the seventies and the eighties, and was brought to a climax by the conversion of Mr. Gladstone in 1886. Since then the cause which was so despised in the days of O'Connell has had one of the great English parties behind it, and has so steadily made its way in the favour of the British nation that it now stands on the threshold of accomplishment.

* * * * *

What, then, emerges from this survey? It is that in returning to Home Rule as the mode of governing Ireland we are simply going back to the old and traditional method of Irish rule. It is also that, on surveying the past, we find not merely that Home Rule has often saved Ireland, but that always the wider and the more generous the form of Home Rule the more it has helped Ireland. The wiser course of accepting Irish advice in Irish affairs has always turned the tide of disaster, and brought the hope of a new happiness for Ireland. Surely here we have a convincing proof that the logical consummation of this policy by the restoration of Home Rule is the only means of bringing back Ireland to a full and secure enjoyment of lasting well-being.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[65] For confirmation of this see Lecky's "Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland," Vol. I., p. 120.

[66] It is clear from Lecky's account that Lord Fitzwilliam's recall was due, not so much to any change of policy in London as to his action in dismissing Beresford, one of the most prominent figures of the Irish Protestant Party.

[67] There is a very close and minute account of the growth of Irish prosperity under the Grattan Parliament in O'Connell's great Repeal speeches to the British Parliament in 1834. Between 1782 and 1797 the consumption of coffee in Ireland went up by 600 per cent., the consumption of tea by 84 per cent., of tobacco by 100 per cent., and wine by 74 per cent. All these figures ran down rapidly after 1800.

[68] The Irish Parliament House, built in the eighteenth century, was, after the Act of Union, handed over to the Bank of Ireland. The House of Lords has been left intact, but special secret instructions were given that the Irish House of Commons should be divided into compartments in order that the memories of the Irish Parliament should be forgotten. Those instructions were carried out, and the Chamber of the Irish House of Commons ceased to exist.



HOME RULE IN THE WORLD

THE CASE FROM ANALOGY



"I wish the Irish were negroes, and then we should have an advocate in the Hon. Baronet. His erratic humanity wanders beyond the ocean, and visits the hot islands of the West Indies, and thus having discharged the duties of kindness there, it returns burning and desolating, to treat with indignity and to trample upon the people of Ireland."

O'CONNELL.



CHAPTER IX.

HOME RULE IN THE WORLD

"Ah!" but I shall be told by Unionist critics who have followed me so far, "but the tendency of the world at present is all towards great empires and away from little states. You are reversing the process."

This will probably be one of the most frequent arguments that we shall hear during the present discussions. We shall, perhaps, have thrown at our heads cases like the absorption of Persia by Russia, of Tripoli by Italy, of Morocco by France, and of the Congo by Germany.

If we are to argue the matter on those lines it will be fair to point out, on the other side, that during the last decade Norway has separated from Sweden, new provincial and state governments have been created in Canada and the United States, new self-governing powers have been given to Cuba and the Philippines by the Americans in faithful and loyal adherence to their word at the time of the Spanish-American war, and, even more recently, new powers have been given to Alsace and Lorraine by the German Empire.

So the argument might go on, to and fro, each party pelting one another with cases from other parts of the world. Perhaps at that point it might be well to remember the grave and wise warning given us by Lord Morley in his "Life of Gladstone"—that each case of political re-adjustment really stands by itself, and that often little light can be thrown, but rather darkness deepened, by studying too closely the analogies from other communities.

Still, though the case of the relations between England and Ireland must always stand on its own merits, there are general tendencies in the world which come under law. There are certain lessons to be gathered from other countries which we should be unwise to ignore. The Greeks, who were great constitution builders, amused themselves in their later period by making immense collections of political specimens from among the Hellenic States. Doubtless their politicians derived some advantage from this practice of their philosophers.

There are general tendencies, and those tendencies may be classified under the two familiar heads of (1) the tendency towards unity and (2) the tendency towards division. These two tendencies are always going on side by side in various parts of the world. But the puzzling part of political study is that very often what seems a tendency towards unity conceals a tendency towards division, and that what seems a tendency towards division is really a tendency to unity.

THE BRITISH EMPIRE

Take, for instance, the famous case of the British Empire. Any superficial observer from another clime or another planet might conclude from reading the records, that the tendency within the British Empire during the last century lay toward division. He would find on looking the matter up in any book of reference that the British Empire now includes nearly thirty Parliaments.[69] He would discover that the powers of the central authority have been gradually waning until practically every great white community outside the United Kingdom has now complete control over its own local affairs. He might even be excused some astonishment if he discovered also that these communities placed heavy taxes on the imports of the mother country, and were in no degree restrained from doing so, and that there even existed a party in the home country who contended that that act of filial attention ought to be rewarded by special preferences to colonial imports at home. Perhaps he would be most astonished when he discovered that these colonies were now engaged in raising their own navies and armies, which might possibly in the future be used for purposes independent of the central control.

Pursuing his enquiries, he would discover that this country of Great Britain had conducted at great cost of life and money, less than ten years ago, a war to prevent the separation and secession of one great white community—that of South Africa—and that, having carried that war to a successful conclusion, the central government had followed up that war by granting to that great white community a strong central local government, with complete control of its local affairs. "You talk about the tendency to unity," he would say, "but have we not here a clear instance of division?"

To all of which we should reply, and reply correctly—"Not at all! The secret of our Empire is that we have found unity in difference. We have achieved the miracle of combination by means of division of power."

We should probably have some difficulty in persuading him of this truth. He might be some Rip Van Winkle, who had gone to sleep during the War of American Independence, and still derived from those days his notions of the right principles of colonial government. But if he conducted his enquiries further he would end by being fully persuaded. For what would he discover? He would find out that in spite of, or perhaps by means of, this principle of division the British Empire was now the most united Empire in the world. He would learn the amazing story, incredible to almost any other nation, of the great rally of colonial troops to the help of the Empire at the time of the Boer War. He would read of the periodical Imperial Conferences at the Centre in London. He would learn of the new drawing together now going on both in regard to foreign policy and military strategy. He would contrast all this with the spirit of the American Colonies between 1776 and 1782. He would look back, perhaps, to the beginning of this new era of self-government, and recall the memory of Canada in rebellion, of Australia in a state of permanent quarrel with Downing Street, and of South Africa in perpetual, recurring, chronic confusion and disorder. He would learn that before 1837 every white British colony was discontented,[70] and that now every colony was loyal. He would contrast these two pictures of Empire. Perhaps, then, he would realise that the true secret of the strength of the modern British Empire lay neither in militarism nor Imperialism, neither in swagger nor bounce nor boasting nor pride, but in the gradual development of that amazing policy of generosity and goodwill which is best typified in the phrase, "Home Rule."

It is Home Rule that has saved the British Empire up to the present. Is it not likely that it is Home Rule that will save her in the future?

"Ah! but"—again will come the cry of the critic of the narrow vision—"look at the South African Union. Is not that an instance of unionism as against Home Rule? Have we not there in this latest achievement a specimen of State authorities over-ruled by a central power?"

In answer to that cry, I turn to the eighty-fifth clause of the South African Act, 1909. In that clause I find the following powers reserved for the local authorities of Cape Colony, Natal, Transvaal, and the Orange River Colony:—

(1) Direct taxation within their provinces. (2) The right of borrowing money on their own credit. (3) All education other than higher education. (4) Agriculture. (5) Hospitals. (6) Municipal institutions. (7) All local works and undertakings within their provinces. (8) All roads and bridges within their provinces. (9) Markets and towns. (10) Fish and game preservation. (11) The right of fine and imprisonment, and (12) Generally all matters which, in the opinion of the Governor-General in Council, are of a merely local or private nature.

Ireland would not very much mind that kind of unionism!

The fact is, of course, that this instance of South Africa is a typical example of the principles of unity and division working at the same time. In regard to South Africa as a whole, the Union Act was a great and beneficent grant of Home Rule. It was the end of a long period of harassing interferences with the affairs of South Africa on the part of the Imperial Government at home, through its High Commissioner on the spot. That process is even now unfinished. It will probably in the end have to be brought to completion by the inclusion within the authority of the South African Parliament of countries like Rhodesia, and even, perhaps, of Basutoland.

But in regard to South Africa itself, the same Act was a case of true unionism required and necessitated by the conditions of the country. Before 1909 the South African states were suffering within themselves from excessive division of functions. They were quarrelling over railways and tariffs. They were unable to pursue any common policy or common aim. That perpetual division of functions weakened them in the presence of the world, and rendered them unfit for local guidance. We should have a similar situation in this country if England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales were all under separate governments, with separate tariffs and separate policy. In that case the doctrine we should be preaching to-day would not be Home Rule, but Unionism. For these two tendencies throughout the world are like a see-saw. Both are required for efficient government. Both may be carried to excessive and exaggerated lengths. Our case in regard to the United Kingdom is that unionism has been carried to excessive lengths, and requires to be tempered by Home Rule.

For let any Unionist glance round the world outside the British Empire. He will find that the British do not stand alone in their trust in the Home Rule principle. Nearly every great Empire in the world rests upon Home Rule as its basis. Even Russia, perhaps the most centralised of all, has its provincial councils, known as the Zemstvos, and it was one of M. Stolypin's most daring actions that he even broke the letter of the Russian Constitution in order to strengthen the Zemstvos of Eastern Russia. Finland, too, a province of Russia, possesses a larger form of local government than is even being demanded by Ireland. It is a curious irony of the present situation that many of those Britons who refuse self-government to Ireland are most diligent in watching the action of Russia in relation to the powerful and—up to the present—almost independent Parliament of Finland.

THE GERMAN EMPIRE

If we pass from Russia to the other great human combinations, we shall find the principle of Home Rule far more extensively and powerfully developed. Take China, a combination of 400,000,000 of human beings, now changing before our eyes from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional republic. But whether as a monarchy or a republic, China has always rested her rule on gigantic and almost autonomous provinces, under separate Viceroys. Those provinces have doubtless been subject to the same autocratic control as China herself, but with the change in her central government they will probably pass by an easy transition into Home Rule provinces. Or come nearer home to an Empire which most Englishmen imagine to be the most centralised in the world—the German Empire. That Empire rests upon a basis of twenty-six autonomous governments, varying from autocracies at one end to republics at the other. The German Empire contains within it every form and shape of human community, varying from sheer mediaevalism to extreme modernism. But whatever the form or shape of these separate governments, they are all alike in having control over their own local affairs. Most of the great states of Germany still possess control even over their own railways. They have their own Parliaments, their own judges, and, in many cases, their own reigning sovereigns. It was part of the wisdom of the founders of the German Empire that they made no attempt to interfere with these local powers. They contented themselves with combining all those forces for common defence, including them under a common tariff, and giving to them a common vote for a common assembly at the centre. In other words, Germany rests upon the two principles of unity and division, and in that combination lies its strength.

THE UNITED STATES

Or turn to the United States. There you have another of those powerful human governments resting on a basis of forty-six State authorities, each with its own legislature, and even with its own little army. Each of those state governments has control over such great matters as criminal and civil law, marriage and divorce, licensing, education, game laws, and the regulation of labour. They have the right to place a direct tax upon property. They have their own governors and their own ministries. And yet they all work harmoniously within the central authority of the Federal States. Probably by no other means could that great combination be held together.

AUSTRIA-HUNGARY

Or come back to Europe, and take the astonishing case of Austria and Hungary. There you have two countries of different race and different language, with different ideals, and with bitter memories of past strife lying between them. A generation ago it was a commonplace among all politicians that the Austrian Empire must break up. Yet it still holds together, and has recently shown itself capable even of aggressive action. The prophecy of decay is being pushed further and further forward, and Austria still remains the great Christian bulwark of Europe. How has that miracle been achieved after the terrible internecine struggles of the mid-nineteenth century? How is it that Hungary has forgotten the hangings and the butcheries of the sixties, and still works within the Austrian Empire? Why, simply by virtue of the principle of Home Rule.